


i see things no body else sees

by dreamsheartstory



Category: Hocus Pocus (1993)
Genre: Future AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 16:25:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsheartstory/pseuds/dreamsheartstory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dani grows up in a strange world neither here nor there thanks to the Sanderson Sisters. She ends up in the faery realm looking for the lost piece of her soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i see things no body else sees

**Author's Note:**

> made in collaboration with Royalarmyofoz who made [this amazing mix! Listen here.](http://royalarmyofoz.tumblr.com/post/108147880537/i-s-e-e-t-h-i-n-g-s-t-h-a-t-n-o-b-o-d-y)

Salem, Massachusetts was a strange town for a California girl to end up in. Stranger still that she would stay after what happened, or voluntarily return when she was finally free, but fifteen years of strangeness, and unexplained encounters had led Dani back to where it had all started. She faced far more dangerous adventures than Thackery Binx and the Sanderson Sisters since that Halloween, and missed the ease with which that first brush with the paranormal had ended. A lit candle, an immortal cat, and three undead witches. Don’t forget the zombie.

Armed with all the knowledge she could amass in this skeptical age, and a degree in folklore with a focus in urban mythology - the closest she could come to a degree in the paranormal, she took a deep breath as she walked down the main street in Salem. They were all around her, the creatures no one else noticed. But they interfered with everything. The degree had been a compromise. Her parents had insisted she attend college as some sort of indentured servitude to live up to the family name. A threat that if she didn’t they would commit her if she didn’t stop talking about the witches that had died three hundred years ago. The day she graduated she had her name legally changed. No longer Dani Dennison, she was now, simply, Dani and that suited her just fine.

It was just another oddity in a life full of strange and wondrous things. Thackery had been the first boy she liked, Alison the first girl.  The first time she realized she shared her brother’s taste in women. Not that she often bothered with such things, usually she was too busy fighting demons and creatures in the dark place between this world and theirs. Nearly having her soul eaten by the Sanderson Sisters woke her up to the possibility that perhaps there was more to this world than anyone dared to talk about. Years later she realized what it had done to her.

Hardly three weeks after she watched Thackery and Emily Binx walk into the morning mist clad naught but in gossamer gowns of white she had stumbled upon an elfish girl in the woods by the cemetery. They startled each other. The girl’s eyes were so big and round and bright, as if they emitted their own light that Dani had been sure she was imagining things. Trauma her parent’s had called it from a fright on halloween and an overactive imagination. She didn’t know yet. Dani had turned to call for her brother but he had, as he was apt to do, disappeared behind a crypt with Alison and by the time she had turned back around the girl had vanished without a sound. An impossible feat with the crease fall leaves coating the ground where she had stood.

Over the years there had been more witches and zombies, some good, some bad. A will-o-the-wisp had led her deep into the forest and a Phooka led her out. A banshee had called to her the night her brother died mysteriously, vanishing without a trace. There was a pack of werewolves at her university that were forced to take down one of their own when he went rogue - the final battle of which had left Dani with a startling mass of white scars on her right arm.

Word had grown up and down the eastern seaboard that you went to Dani when strange things began to happen. Between classes she had studied different paranormal arts and became proficient enough keep herself safe most of the time. She came to realize that defeating the Sanderson Sisters had been enact of blind luck, for all involved. These days she had reinforcements. A werewolf friend was her muscle, a faery girl taught her how to tap into the magic flows that ran throughout the land. The lay lines converged on Salem, creating a power vortex that called creatures to it like a siren song. She had met a siren once, was nearly lured to her death in a cold clear lake before she had been saved by a stranger. All he had seen was a drowning girl. She never told him about the siren who had called to her. Dani had been sixteen at the time and it was then that she realized not everyone could see the world of the paranormal or interact with it. Some of the creatures could traverse the border, living in both, most only crossed the thin veil to hunt or scavenge. Dani lived in the mist between, not wholly another world. The older she became the less she found herself really in either world. She had found she couldn’t easily enter the faery cities or travel to the lost lands, and yet she could never escape them either. When Winifred had started  the curse  to suck her soul from her body she had been pulled into this in between world. It was a lonesome, painful half life, and the longer she lived it the more she felt discomfort in either world.

That day Dani stood on the streets of downtown Salem, beneath the old gazebo in front of the old school building. To her left lay the city and the humans living their life in ignorance, though less than most. Not everyone here was stupid enough to light old candles. To her right she could see the twinkling lights of a faery mound hidden up by the cemetery. It was that direction she walked. A man brushed by her, not quite seeing her, but knowing something had passed by him. He looked to Myra, confused, knowing he had passed by far enough away to avoid her, before shaking his head and moving on.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Myra, the impossibly muscled and tiny werewolf that followed her everywhere, slipped her hand into Dani’s. Dani nodded, it was time she find out what had happened to her that halloween day so long ago.

_______________________

 

Myra tightened her grip on Dani’s hand as they neared the faery mound, with each step they took closer she could feel the other girl’s attention wander, the glamour making her distracted and forgetful, pushing her back toward the mortal world. She looked up at the taller girl, her brow furrowing wondering if they would be able to make it. Dani had been refused entry to the faery worlds before. The door loomed before them a shining light in a round hole in the hill. She couldn’t quite look at it, but knew it was golden and soft, yet would burn her eyes blind if she forced her gaze.

For a moment she felt her vice like grip slipping and she pulled Dani to her as hard as she could. Her arms wrapped around the strange human instinctively and when she opened her eyes again they were standing in the entryway to the great hall. She breathed in deeply and wished she needn’t let go. Roses climbed the marble walls, blood red against the glittering white, a living reminder that this was no simple palace made of stone. She shook her head and let go quickly, her nose filled with Dani’s scent. It was intoxicating and she knew she needed to keep her distance. Relinking their hands to make sure the other girl wasn’t puled away from her she turned her senses to the rest of the world beyond the antechamber. Nodding to herself feeling no imminent threat, she glanced over at Dani to see if the other was okay.

“ _I know_ don’t eat anything. Not unless I want to stay here forever.” Dani rolled her eyes, “Which I don’t.” She started walking toward the sounds of a great number of fae eating and talking, what meal they couldn’t be quite sure, time moved different in the other world. What was certain was that there were a number of the glittering throng in attendance today. The royalty of the court had gathered.

They had managed to walk into the heart of the faery mound and Myra could feel it shift around them as they walked, moving them where it wanted them to be. Myra pulled them to a halt and to their knees as they found themselves standing before the Faery Queen. 

“Curious. How did you enter little one and manage to bring this halfling with you?” the queen’s voice was like ice in their skulls.

Myra risked a glance up and quickly averted her gaze again. Her heart pounded in her throat, why did the faery mound want them before the queen when the queen didn’t even know why they were here. She swallowed thickly and stared at her shoes. It was Dani who answered. Stupid, bold, ignorant, beautiful Dani. For everything she had seen she was still so very human.

“We walked in.” Dani raised her eyes up from the spot on the floor next to Myra and met the Faery Queen’s gaze, squirming slightly under its weight. She wasn’t about to be intimidated by anything.  The girl had survived nearly having her soul ripped from her body but it hadn’t given  her an ounce of sense. Dani gritted her teeth, “The halfing wants to know why she is.” 

Myra could sense Dani shifting next to her, hear her heart beating, feel her breath catch in the vibrations on the air. Gently she tightened her grip on the other girl’s hand.

“I want to know why I can’t move freely between the worlds and am caught in between.”

The Faery Queen’s face was blank. Myra had risked looking up from where she had been with her head bowed so low it nearly touched the marble floor and she wished she hadn’t. The sight before her was all at once too beautiful, too entrancing, too fearsome. Ugly and beautiful all at once, delicate yet carved from stone. Ageless, youthful, ancient, immortal. She tried to swallow but she couldn’t, she could barely draw breath. Her gaze was fixed on the faery. In the back of her mind she realized she was glammored. In the back of her mind she started to panic. She could do nothing about it.

Slowly the Faery Queen twisted her hand this way and that, watching it as a silvery mist enveloped it. Gently she coaxed the mist into tendrils and pushed them towards the girls. Like long terrible fingers, living ropes of mist made of steel, they wrapped around Myra and dragged her upright, her feet dangling just above the floor where she had knelt.

“So what price will you pay, Dani, what will you sacrifice to make it stop?”

“Let her go!” Dani shouted taking a step towards the Faery Queen. The queen gently raised her hand palm out and the girl found herself unable to advance.

“Silence. I want you to find what you lost on the banks of the river Styx. To return you’ll have to choose. Bring me the blank book bound in souls and you’ll have your freedom, or stay forever in the mist.”

Dani had no idea what she had lost. Or moreover, what the queen was referring to, there had been many things she had lost over the last fifteen years since the Sanderson Sisters had tried to drink down her soul. And how exactly would a book be bound in souls, ephemeral misty things that they seemed to be.

_______________________

 

There were few ways into the underworld. The chief among them, dying, which was out of the question. Myra had nixed the idea before Dani even had a chance to bring it up. The next most common entrance involved a length harrowing journey traversing the rivers Lethe and Styx at the journey’s end, which Dani had no desire to make. It wasn’t a guarantee she would even succeed. There were dangerous creatures between here and there, far more dangerous than she had ever faced, the kind that didn’t dabble in the human world anymore.

Somewhere in her demand the Faery Queen had mentioned a third way for Dani to enter the underworld, a way she could find herself at the banks of the river Styx, but she would have to go alone. It was unlikely Myra would be able to follow her if the Faery Queen had even let her go. Myra was a captive in the faery realm until Dani returned. If she returned empty handed she couldn’t guarantee her friend’s fate.

So on the edge of a river that ran just outside the faery mound Dani felt herself slipping into the mist between the worlds that she had so often avoided, choosing to run through it at top speed or cling to someone else as she moved from one world to the other. There was another option though. If she entered the mist and she could find the way to the underworld. To any world truthfully, but that would take skill and practice. Her soul would guide her to the place that had been calling her for fifteen years.

The mud on the riverside stuck to her shoes and the sky above faded from a milky white to a black abyss as she stepped forward. It was too easy to find her way to the edge of the water. She took a step back, the mist already receding, leaving her firmly in the underworld, only vaguely able to feel the pull of the human world. As much as she felt out of place, another part of her felt at ease, as if this was the place she had been searching for all those years. Ever since… she shook the thought from her head, not even allowing herself to think of him.

Dani felt the tears prick at the back of her eyes. It happened ever time she allowed herself to think of her brother. If the Faery Queen had sent her down here to look for him he was long gone in the land of the dead. He had slowly faded after he saved Dani from the undead witches. The Dennison family buried an empty coffin but he had been gone for years. 

She screamed as cold fingers wrapped around her shoulder halting her forward progress toward the river of souls that made the long procession down from above. A hundred thousand dead and lost, finding themselves again in the underworld, an eternity unknown. Dani turned, looking on a young red headed bucktoothed woman. Winifred Sanderson. “No salt to protect you down here.”

Dani looked the dead witch up and down, not surprised to find the one who had started this all, “What do you want?”

“Ooh, this one still has bite. Still has life. Something to bite, a bit of that soul left I never did get to enjoy.” Winifred looked down at Dani, her eyes twinkling as she drummed her fingers together. Something was altogether different about her, as if she were fighting to be corporeal, as if she might be as waifish as the souls wandering their way down to cross the river.

“And you never will.” Dani pushed past the dead witch and toward the docks. 

“I wouldn’t be so certain of that dearie. You have something I want, but I also have the thing you’re looking for.”

Dani stopped and turned, “And how would you know what I’m searching for? You’ve been down here fifteen years. A lot changes in that short of time.”

Winifred shrugged, “Words carry on the wind, and we both I know I have my ways in coming back.” She drug one clawed finger across the underside of Dani’s jaw. “Words carry on the wind, and mist travels far.” 

Dani swatted the other woman’s hand away. “Then what is it. What exactly am I looking for?”

“The other piece of your soul, the one that I stole, your brother, and a book.”

Paranormal researcher, private detective for the strange and unnatural, nothing she had seen could have prepared her for any of this, “I’m only searching for two things, you must be mistaken.” She took a step back, making as if to turn, but not wanting to let Winifred out of her sight.

“Oh, no, I’m certain I’m quite right you see. I have eyes and ears in every realm. I know what it is the Faery Queen wants and why she sent you. Max,” Winifred snapped her fingers. “The book.”

From behind Dani there were footsteps, light, wet, but not sticking in the mud, as if the person who made them was not quite solid, not heavy enough to make an impression. Slowly she turned her head, not wanting to see what she knew she would. Just as she had seen him last, Max was not dead, merely fading. In saving her his soul had been ripped apart. What had been left was only enough to keep him in the human world for a few years. Each passing day he had faded a little more, more people failed to notice him, and as they stopped noticing him he started to slip away. He was always shrouded in the mist, until simply one day, it swallowed him whole.

Her throat was tight, and she wanted to cry out, to run to him, but he was half of himself, not dead but not alive. He was not wholly her big brother. She could see through him, just as she had on that last morning, when she had looked away for only a moment, feeling a tickling of mist at her fingertips, and when she had turned back he was gone.

“Max,” she whispered.

He barely looked up from the object he carried. A glowing book, the cover a swirling grayness, that shone like starlight in the distance. It looked more liquid than solid. An ephemeral swirling mass. 

Dani could feel warmth in her chest, a painful ache she hadn’t felt since the day Winifred Sanderson tried to steal her soul. The tears pricking at her eyes fell, heavy and hot, but Dani didn’t make a sound. She gritted her teeth.

“There it is,” Winifred smiled. It was unnerving. “That didn’t take long, it always floated nearby him.”

“What did?”

“Your soul.” Winifred moved, gliding behind Max, her long pointed fingers, trailing on the collar of his jacket. “You see, your soul was never destroyed, only severed. So the moment it found you it came back, attracted like a magnet. But poor Max’s here, his was turned into youth and energy. So no matter how long he waits, he will never be whole enough to die.”

Winifred stalked back to Dani, smiling down at her, “Unless of course you ask that Faery Queen of yours to release him. Though I suppose she can’t let you have them both. Your werewolf and your brother, no that would be too generous.”

“What are they to her, they aren’t hers. They are mine.” Dani felt panic rising in her chest. She had long ago mourned Max. Crying with her family and then alone for years as she realized what had happened to him. He would never be whole again even if she could take him back. It would be too hard to explain. He could never see anyone but Dani from their old life. But she couldn’t leave him here like this.

She could never leave Myra with the Faery Queen. There was something there, the moment her soul had melded back together, a spark of understanding and feeling. Leaving Myra in the hands of the Faery Queen would break her completely now that she was whole again.

“She likes your werewolf very much.”

“What would you know of her?”

“Why do you think I’m here little girl? And not some faceless soul in the waters of the river?” Winifred looked down at Dani a mischievous smile on her lips. “You’re whole now, how lovely you would taste.” Winifred caressed Dani’s cheek. She breathed in, closing her eyes, as if she were savoring the scent of life is this place that smelled only of death.

“Take it and run,” Max pushed the book into Dani’s hands. It felt like ice and weighed nothing. The tighter she gripped it the more it burned, but if she let go she was afraid it would dissipate, blending in with the mist around them and she would lose her chance.

“I’m coming back for you!”

“No-“ whatever he might have said was lost, what little will he had left eaten with the effort it took to hand the book over.

“You stupid boy. Do you realize what you’ve done?”

Max stared blankly off at the river Styx his expression unmoving. 

“Idiots, I am always surrounded by idiots. First my sisters and now this useless less than human soul, that-“ 

Dani had run, as hard and fast as she could in the muddy river bank, towards the swirling mist that was always there behind her, at her beck and call. It came quicker as if responding her thoughts, propelling her forward and away from the underworld.

_______________________

 

Dani stopped when she felt solid ground beneath her feet again. The damp soil of the river bank just outside the faery mound. Her face was sticky with tears having found Max and losing him all over again. She scrubbed at her face furiously. Angry at all the creatures that had power over her life when she had none over theirs. If she didn’t turn this book over, whatever it was, she would lose Myra as well and suddenly that seemed like an unbearable thought.

“I see you’ve made your choice.” The Faery Queen interrupted her thoughts. She was lounging by the river, idly dragging a long slender finger through the water watching the ripples her movements caused in the surface of the slow flowing 

“That was no choice! Sacrifice my brother to eternal torment or sacrifice my- Myra to slavery or death or whatever it is you would have done to her.” Dani folded her arms across her chest, holding the book to her tightly.

“You have what you wanted, do you not? Free passage. You’ll no longer feel the pull of the underworld. Though you would have saved yourself a lot of heartache if you had answered its call.”

Dani glared at the Faery Queen, realizing the woman was right, she had passed easily from the underworld to the faery realm, barely stumbling in the mists as she ran. Winifred had said her soul had been mended, and the tug was gone, the feeling that she was fading dissipated. 

“Now give me the book.” The Faery Queen outstretched her hand.

“Not until you give me Myra.” Dani took a step back.

“The human learns. Guards, fetch the dog,” she sighed leaning back against the rock she had been lounging against.

“She isn’t a dog!”

The Faery Queen made a tutting sound, “Such horrible manners. Is that how you address someone who has helped you?”  
“Helped me? You sent me on a quest to _hell_. I had to face Winifred Sanderson again. And you knew what was waiting for me but you didn’t warn me.” Dani could feel the tears welling up again, all the emotions she hadn’t quite felt fully for the last fifteen years bubbling up to the surface.

“But your soul is whole again is it not?”

“I can pass fully into whatever world, yes, but you did nothing. That piece of my soul came back without your help.”  
“Without my help dear? You never would have set foot in that wretched place if it I had not sent you to fetch my book.” The Faery Queen shook her head as if tired of explaining simple things to a child.

Myra was thrust into Dani’s arms as the Faery Queen reached up to snatch the silvery book from her hands. She wrapped her arms around the other girl and both were still for a moment, not sure what would happen next. Afraid to ask in case they were separated again.

“Now go. The book is payment for bringing a werewolf into my kingdom. However, you still owe me for your soul.” Slowly the Faery Queen began to rise.

Dani grasped Myra’s hand with her own and pulled the other girl behind her as she ran, the mist swirling around her. She didn’t care where they ended up as long as they got as far away as possible from the faery world.


End file.
